


the soft sound (of falling off a bridge)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [72]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen, Tags would be too spoilery but, this is upsetting please don't read if you can't handle trauma, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Here is the river and here is the sight of many ruined things.





	the soft sound (of falling off a bridge)

Your master does not tire when his nose is on a scent. It is a smaller nose than yours, but a nose all the same, and you see him leaning, and sniffing the wind, and you see his bright hair around his face, and you know: your master is hunting.

(You are with him, in this.)

Your master kills when he hunts, and your master has killed men as well as beasts now that he is older, now that he is wild and tall, and you do not like the smell of blood on him, when it is blood like his. You have lapped at his limp fingers, and you have cleaned the salt-stickiness of it from his wrists, and you have not found a way to make him breathe easily, even in sleep.

Your master does sleep, though. You see to that. You stay with him until he does.

Because this is you: a follower. Grief and a yellow butterfly, salt blood salt tears and dry snakeskin husk (no fangs) and you are here, and your master is here, and now you both run.

(Your master is hunting.)

 

It has rained. It has rained and the ground is soft and smells of worms and the things that live among the worms. You are hungry but there is no time. Meat, bread, even the sweet ends of grass—no time. You pant in the damp dew-air, you pant in the dry day-air, and there

is

no

time

 

(Smell the river.)

 

When you were a pup your master kissed your head with his boy-mouth and you kissed his smooth cheeks with your tongue, which was a smaller tongue then, and you loved also his brothers, some of whom are now very large and some of whom were, then, very small—

 

(Hear the river.)

 

Your master is only happy when he is with his brothers. Your master stood beside the soft ground, smelling of worms, when they put the cold body in the ground.

The body used to be Him. You know when a body is just a body, and He was a body like that.

You sigh, and you smell the river, and the heat and salt of your master’s tears.

 

(You are just a dog, aren’t you?)

Here is the river and here is the sight of many ruined things. Some bodies are meat and some bodies are bones and some are neither of these things.

This is your master, scrabbling down the side of the bank, looking so much like falling that you leap after him, you are not going to let him fall alone, you are going to fall too—

 

Your master screams

_No_

That is the word that means Huan, do not eat that, Huan, do not run away, Huan, do not jump—

And that is the word that means…

_Smallest one._

You will always know the smallest one. You will know him when he snuffles against you in his sleep, his soft hair brushing your wiry chin. You will know him when he cries, and when he runs, and when he laughs with his head thrown back and here, his head is thrown back but it is just a body’s head and this is

a body

that does not even look like

a body

(neither of these things)

That is because it is a body that was drowned.

 

_No_

_No, no, Amrod, Amrod, no, Amrod please, God no—_

 

(Smallest one.)

(Gone.)

(Not laughing.)

 

The ground is soft and your master

gathers

all the swollen grey limbs and the shapeless face with eyes gone and a mouth not a mouth and yet your master is still the boy who will always fight and always love and will lift the broken rabbits from your reach and say, _not this one, Huan_

Not this one. Not this one. You wish—you wish it was _not this one_.

 

The ground is soft and it covers the body. You sigh. Your master is sobbing and you go to him and this is your head against his knee, this is your tongue against the rough cloth over his knee.

This is your master, breathing in a way that does not sound like breathing.

 

(This goes on a long time.)

 

The ground covers the body and your master climbs and your master is your master even when he _looks like this_

And there are more bodies.

On the path above, with the smell of blood under the smell of rain under the smell of hot salt tears—

There are more bodies.

 

A man who has no head or hands and a woman who has no face.

(You knew them.)

 

You see your master stop. You press against him, against his boots and the backs of his knees, and you wait for the shudder, the sobs.

 _Nothing_.

You wait, at least, for his heartbeat to change.

(It doesn't.)

 

You look up at your master, you look up at his boots when he mounts his horse, and the terrible grey face that is still living, and you—

—you are just a dog—

( _Not this one._ )


End file.
